--

This 1996 Hillary ‘Honesty’ Clip Is an Eerie Preview of 2016

If you think any of the attacks against Hillary are new, just watch this 1996 clip. It’ll change how you see the 2016 election.

I’ve probably spent as much time analyzing and writing about coverage of Hillary as anyone in politics. But this video of Hillary being interviewed on CNN in 1996 really stunned me. Seeing the identical questions about her honesty, asked with the same accusatory tone, hit home.

There’s no way to watch the clip below without appreciating how long Hillary’s integrity has been under attack.

Read this quote:

“Once again you find yourself mired down in the credibility cloud … a new CNN poll shows that most Americans don’t think you’re telling the truth.”

Can you tell if that’s from 2016 or from two decades prior? See for yourself:

My colleague Melissa McEwan offers a profound insight:

The thing we have to understand about these interviews is that they’re not about trying to establish facts about Hillary’s fundamental truthfulness or integrity. They’re about an attempt to hurt her on camera and capture her pain. The persistent exploration of negative feelings toward Hillary is about shaming her, about replicating the visceral responses many people have to women seeking power.

The fact is this: Hillary Clinton, the person, the human being, the wife, the mother, the grandmother, the friend, the leader, the boss, the colleague, the peer, the public servant, is honest and trustworthy. She is liked, trusted and respected by the most accomplished people in the world, from Warren Buffett to Michelle Obama, from Mike Bloomberg to John Lewis, from Barack Obama to Elizabeth Warren, from Dolores Huerta to Morgan Freeman.

The national media, however, are singularly focused on presenting a distorted caricature of Hillary. What they fail to admit is that in asking questions about Hillary’s honesty with such singular focus, they are creating the very misperceptions they’re reporting on. It’s a vicious loop that they exploit with unnerving skill.

One of my missions in 2016 has been to expose the process by which mainstream reporters and pundits do the GOP’s bidding and promote the “Hillary liar” myth simply by asking the question enough times.